The government will reform its household registration system
soon, enabling migrants residing in small and medium-sized cities
to become local residents.
Chen Hao, a Ministry of Public Security official, said the move
is among the government's upcoming package of measures to help
China's huge number of farmers-turned-workers settle down in urban
areas.
China has about 660 cities and about 80 percent of them will be
affected by the measure. Some with too large populations won't
adopt the measure.
Chen said the effort is aimed at reforming the country's rigid
household registration system, which was introduced in 1958 to
strictly limit mobility under the planned economic system.
Since the country started transforming to a market economy from
the late 1970s, more and more people have left their hometowns for
cities to work or do business. Problems then emerged as outsiders,
who amounted to 94 million as of last September, were denied equal
access to work, education, housing and other social rights enjoyed
by locals.
Yuan Chongfa, vice president of the China Center for Town Reform
and Reform, said there is still a long way to go to further the
reform system, since it will not only facilitate the development of
a market economy but will mark greater social progress in ensuring
equal civil rights.
"Because the cost to become city residents is very high and only
a small part of migrants can afford it," said Yuan.
That's the case with the city's 38-year-old migrant Pi
Guojin.
"Even though the policy has allowed me to be an official
resident, I will still be marginalized because my poor income
doesn't allow me to buy houses," said Pi, who has been selling
lighting equipments in the coastal city for eight years. His
jobless wife and 10-year-old child remain in Yingkou, another port
city in Liaoning.
In the city, an average apartment will cost at least 200,000
yuan (US$24,000), but their annual income averages 5,000-6,000 yuan
(US$602-722).
Including Pi, hundreds of thousands of migrants are lucky enough
because the local government is trying to ensure them to live the
same as locals.
"I'm fortunate because now I share a heated apartment with eight
migrants," said Pi, who spent a previous chilly winter in shabby
sheds like most of China's migrants. "The rent is as low as 100
yuan (US$12) per month."
He planned to rent a single room and allow his wife and child
settle down in Dalian after the Lunar New Year.
Pi's apartment in Ganjingzi district was among the city's 34
special places for migrants to live. The local government has also
built 637 dormitories for them.
Vice Mayor Sun Guangtian said about 17 percent of the city's
700,000 migrants have been housed with help from local
government.
The apartments used to be idle rooms owned by the government and
the
state-owned enterprises.
As the city is in its effort to become an important port and
ship-making center of Northeast Asia, it needs at least 1 million
laborers within five years.
"We will make more efforts to do away with discrimination and
satisfy their necessities in the city," said Sun.
The city's example was set up with help from United Nation
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
With investment of about US$150,000 during previous two years,
the UN organization has chosen seven cities including Dalian,
Shanghai and Beijing to help facilitate integration of migrant
workers with urban communities.
"I was impressed by the example set up by Dalian because the
migrants have marched forward with a significant step, with safe
and relatively comfortable residing places," UNESCO expert
Genevieve Domenach-Chich told China Daily.
Governments need to provide migrant workers with more
information on how to find a job and protect their interests and
rights in a strange city, she said. "The management system should
be an open and dynamic one."
An academy Professor Huang Ping said further work would be
conducted for migrant workers to readjust themselves and realize
the importance of law and public ethics.
He said governments should shift their attitude of restraint and
rejection of migrant workers and instead focus on gainfully using
their services and integrating them into the cities.
"The sense of feeling that they belong nowhere is not socially
healthy and will do little to curb criminal tendencies," said
Huang.
(China Daily January 6, 2004)